Clientele loyal to Avalon barbers With photo gallery

See and be shornFor decades, father-and-son presidents, mayors, surgeons and lawyers have taken a seat in the leather chairs at Houston's Avalon Barber Shop

LORI RODRIGUEZ, Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Sunday, August 28, 2005

TUCKED in a corner of prime real estate off Kirby and Westheimer, rubbing elbows with the River Oaks Grill and on the edge of that neighborhood, the Avalon Barber Shop seems like a place that time forgot.

A red, white and blue barber pole spins lazily outside the front door. Six well-worn leather chairs are waiting inside. The scents of bay rum and other old-fashioned shaving products waft through the air. And, very much in their element, Joe Quintero and Rudy Rincon, who came from Waelder to the big city and made good, snip the hair of Houston's rich and famous as they have for nearly four decades.

One day last week, Walter Bering, Realtor to the rich and a cousin of the owners of Bering's hardware stores, dropped by for a cut. Ex-Enron Chairman Ken Lay had just left. Ed Smith, one of the designers of NASA's lunar landing module, was getting a touch-up. The shop hummed with quiet conversation and comforting ambience.

"We keep the look of the shop the same on purpose. The customers don't want it to change," says Quintero, 60, who left Gonzales County in 1967 because he wanted to get out of the country.

A year later, Quintero became an apprentice to the original shop owner, Charlie Holcombe. Rincon, 68, had been in Houston since 1958. He and a friend hopped a bus to visit a relative here, got a gander at urban life and never left. After driving a truck and doing other barbering stints, Rincon joined his childhood friend at Avalon.

They learned the trade and befriended the customers for 10 years, and when Holcombe retired in 1978, he sold the shop to Quintero and Rincon. The price of a haircut has gone from $1 a head to $18, but otherwise they haven't changed a thing, and their clientele remains intensely loyal.

Famous customers

Everyone really does. Former President Bush and the current President Bush both are longtime customers; when the latter was barely out of his teens, he would tell Quintero about a new sister-in-law who cooked fabulous Mexican food.

Quintero still laughs at the memory. It wasn't until much later that he realized the skilled sister-in-law was Columba Bush, the Mexican-born wife of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Former Mayor Bob Lanier and current Mayor Bill White are regulars. "This is really strong Bush country, but we do get the Democrats, too," Quintero confides.

Politicians, though, aren't the only famous people to walk through the doors. Heart surgeon Denton Cooley, former U.S. Sen. and Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, former Lt. Gov. William P. Hobby, and criminal attorney Richard "Racehorse" Haynes, all have sat in one of the six brown chairs.

They've talked politics, business, the economy, the state of the nation, all into the discreet ears of their barbers. They've shared largess; the late rancher-oilman Wesley West regularly dropped $50 and $100 tips in the giddy days of Houston's oil boom during the 1970s, the barbers recalled.

Pictures of children and grandchildren of longtime customers adorn an entire wall, right next to photos of Quintero's and Rincon's own children and grandchildren.

"Our customers have been so loyal and good to us. They'd do anything for anybody here. Every Christmas we throw a party to thank them, and they all try to drop by," Rincon says.

Rincon began chemotherapy at M.D. Anderson last week for treatment of recurrent colon cancer that first appeared 15 months ago. He has been deluged with offers from top hospital officials, benefactors and other influential clients.

"Everybody wants to do something; they all want to help. But I tell them all that, so far, everyone at the hospital has been really good to me and everything is working out," Rincon says.

Despite cutting well-known hair for 37 years, Quintero and Rincon remain the down-home, country boys they were when they made their way to Houston. Their speech is peppered with Spanish, and their delight in their clientele is open.

Houston Texans Vice Chairman Philip Burguireres already has given Quintero two sets of game tickets for this season — one set for a private suite and one set on the 50-yard line.

Young aspirants

Houston has changed since they started cutting hair, literally growing up around the shop, say the partners. Their hometown boasts a poultry plant and sausage factory, and the population never has risen much above 1,700 people. "In those days, this city was where Chicanos in small Texas towns wanted to go to. It was the place," remembers Quintero.

Attorney and client Jacobo Monty remembers hanging out with the partners at the Avalon Drug Store, which was then next door, when they were all young aspirants.

"When I decided to go to law school, one of them said, 'Hey, I can call John B. Connally and maybe he can help you out,' " Monty says. Connally, the former Treasury secretary and governor of Texas from 1963 to 1968, was a lawyer by trade and an Avalon customer.

A few years ago, in a column called "The Razor's Edge," Playboy magazine named the Avalon Barber Shop one of the top 10 places to get a haircut in the country. Quintero and Rincon framed the column.

"Can you imagine how many barber shops there are in the whole country, and they picked us. Life has been so good to us. We have a lot to be grateful for," Quintero says.